Marketing vs Advertising

Earlier this week I noted that marketing is an intrinsic part of business. You can’t escape it if you want to make money. But I also laid out some rather stark math about how bad certain types of advertising can be. The math is real – advertising your book can be a poor return on investment. But you can’t let that stop you from marketing your book.

First of all, you have to understand that marketing and advertising are two separate but related things. Any business you run (and remember, selling your own books is a business!) must do both!

Marketing is everything you do – everything – related to letting people know that your product (book) exists and why they should purchase (and read) it.

Advertising is when you pay somebody to include some kind of ad for your product – a video, a little image, a blurb, a text segment, whatever. It’s a subset of marketing.

Advertising almost always costs money. Sometimes you can work out a trade with someone, but usually you’re going to have to pay for it. With other forms of marketing, on the other hand, you can very often trade hard work for money. And you must keep doing it.

You hate marketing? Suck it up, buttercup – or go get a day job. If you want your books to sell, you have to market them.

You’re probably used to thinking of marketing as a dirty word, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s time to rethink the word. Look at it this way:

Nobody will ever read your book if they don’t know it exists. Nobody. Ever.

Stop thinking of marketing as a dastardly activity and think of it as precisely two things:

Letting people know that your book exists.

Letting them know why they should read it.

The first part is actually the easy part. It’s the second part that’s hard. And that’s the part you probably associate with sleazy used car salesmen.

But it doesn’t have to be slimy. Is there a good reason why people should read your book? Great! Then your marketing step 2 is just to communicate that to them. If there’s not a good reason why they should read your book, then it’s time to go back to your desk, sit down, and write a new one. Or rewrite the old one.

And if you can’t articulate a reason why someone should read your book, then it’s time to think pretty hard about whether or not there is a reason that they should.

Despite the bad math of advertising, you should keep marketing your book, even if you only have one – especially with free, cheap, or easy marketing methods.

Here are some cheap or even free things you should start early and keep at to market your book:

Start a blog and write interesting posts about interesting topics!

Bonus points if the blog’s topic relates to your book topic!

Create profiles on various social media and participate!

Get as many of your friends and family to read and review your book as possible!

Talk about your book to anyone who will listen!

Here are a few other things that you should consider spending some money on, even if you only have one book:

A good cover. It’s not so much that good covers sell books (although they do). The bigger issue is that bad covers kill books. You don’t have to spring for the best cover ever. But a bad cover is worse than “not worth the money.” It will actually work against you. There are some good places you can get decent covers done for under $200. They’re worth it. This is also the gift that keeps on giving. You pay for the cover now for book one… but when book two comes out, book one still has that excellent cover you paid for. So book one’s sales boost from book two’s release will be better. And so on.

A good web site. Did you read what I said above about bad covers killing books? Ditto for bad web sites. The good news is, it’s pretty easy to build a not-terrible web site these days. But you want more than that. You don’t just want a web site that looks good. You want a web site that’s built to sell your book. If you’re not technically inclined, or if you’re no good at marketing, save yourself a lot of headaches. Pay someone to build a web site for you. You can find some not terrible web designers for a few hundred dollars. Like your book’s cover, this is the gift that keeps on giving. A good web site will keep selling book one… and then take only a little modification to start selling book two. Invest your time and energy here and, if necessary, your money.

Some sales artwork. The internet is a fantastic place and you can find artwork pretty inexpensively if you look. For $10-30 a piece you can buy very high quality stock images to use. For $30-200 a piece you can pay for some pretty good quality artwork. This is especially worth the money if your book is the first of the series. You can reuse that character art for every single book in that line – and add to it with each book. Eventually you’ll have a really huge collection of art you can choose from for flyers, posters, ads, etc. But you can also start small and cheap and build this collection as you have money.

Give away books. Yes, you heard me. Give them away. Give away as many books as you possibly can, especially book one in a series. Ebooks are best for this, of course, because they’re free to you. But give away print books, too, if you have to. The more the better. My experience is that about one out of every one hundred readers will actually review a book (maybe fewer). But you need those reviews. So get those books out the door to anyone who will read them. Remember: this is helpful for getting reviews and selling books now. But even more importantly, you’re laying a foundation of fans who will buy your future books. So give them away like candy.

Parting thought:

If you’re still on book one, then check your focus. Making a fortune on book sales now is unrealistic for most people. You want to lay the best foundation you can for your next book release. In fact, no matter how many books you have out, you should look at every book release as a chance to grow your base for future releases. Always plan at least one book ahead. “If I do this, I can build up more fans for next time!” Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

My name is Russell Newquist. I am a software engineer, a martial artist, an author, an editor, a businessman and a blogger.
I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science, but I'm technically a high school dropout. I also think that everything in this paragraph is pretty close to meaningless.
I work for a really great small company in Huntsville, Alabama building really cool software.
I'm the owner and head instructor of Madison Martial Arts Academy, which I opened in 2013 less to make money and more because I just really enjoy a good martial arts workout with friends.
I'm the editor in chief of Silver Empire and also one of the published authors there. And, of course, there is this blog - and all of its predecessors.
There's no particular reason you should trust anything I say any more than any other source. So read it, read other stuff, and think for your damn self - if our society hasn't yet over-educated you to the point that you've forgotten how.

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